The present disclosure relates generally to employee communication programs and, more particularly, to publishing and distributing employee communications.
Modern business management calls for effective communications between management and employees. Among various other techniques for communicating with employees, conventional employee communication programs have typically included providing a bulletin board upon which printed material, such as posters including photographs, artwork, designs and/or slogans, and messages, are displayed. Topics that may be the subjects of employee communications are diverse and may involve safety, work quality, teamwork, morale and self-motivation. For example, since safety is an important consideration in most working environments, a poster with a slogan relating to the exercise of caution in potentially dangerous situations may be displayed for impressing upon employees an employer's requirement for observing on-the-job safety. Other examples of representative employee communications include news releases about the company, messages for boosting employee morale and/or messages relating to employee activities.
In conventional systems, graphic designers may develop posters and other employee communications by hand or on a computer aided design system. Typically, they are printed as a large employee communication for display and then sent to a client for mounting to a bulletin board. The bulletin board may be relatively sophisticated and creatively organized for efficiency and visual attention, such as a three-panel bulletin board on the order of 26 inches (66 centimeters) by 63 inches (160 centimeters). The posters are typically manually replaced to communicate corporate goals, news of interest and employee activities to employees.
At regular time intervals, such as once a month or once a week, clients may select new posters and messages and/or the new posters and messages are automatically selected, printed and shipped periodically to each client. Because of the large number and variety of clients and the specific requirements for certain users, there are significant inefficiencies associated with selecting, printing and shipping the employee communications. This is especially so where various bulletin boards located throughout a company's various facilities require different material to be posted on differing bulletin boards.
In addition, achieving a relatively high degree of customization and selectivity with traditional manual bulletin board systems is economically problematic.
Conventional systems also do not provide for immediate or on-the-spot distribution of new content and information to employees, which may be important if the new information, for example, pertains to safety hazards or potentially dangerous situations in a working environment. Since selecting, printing, and shipping employee communications requires a significant amount of time, the distribution of new content and information will be delayed. In certain circumstances, the information to be distributed may become outdated and/or irrelevant by the time distribution occurs.
Accordingly, it is desired to provide an efficient system that overcomes many of the deficiencies of prior art systems and services.